I've been trying to get this game from Pie in the sky working. Never seen a complete version of the game, but a beta can be found on the web.
The game starts up fine, but choosing almost any option from the main menu results in a crash:
As always, any ideas are welcome.
That error occurs if the system date is after 15 July 1993. I guess the cutoff was put in because it's beta. The DATE command in SVN will be useful here; the 4DOS shell has the command if you're not using an SVN build. Other than the date issue it seems to work OK with default settings in DOSBox; but it's a slug of a real-mode program, so dynamic core and max cycles is probably a good idea.
So that was it... I don't think i would have imagined it in a million years. Of course it seems natural that the authors didn't want the program to float around the net after 1993, but it's the first time I see that kind of "protection".
Thank you very much.
This is interesting early 3DGCS material here. Judging by the DEMO thing, the expiration date is probably unintentional for the real author of the game.
However it's not unusual for betas to be timelocked either. You can also find the Doom Press Release version that can't play after Dec 1993, and the Heretic Shareware Beta that can't play after Dec 1994.
I'd say the expiration date thing was intentional. The included manual mentions this:
This demo will only function for a limited time.
Although no further details are given.
